Paola De Narvaez' work revolves around key themes that resonate throughout her various creations. Her ideas revolve around movement, the universality of our view of the world, and the completeness of the object through mental collaboration between the work and the public. This is expressed through the dynamism of form, fullness and emptiness, and the balance of forces that are the source of creation.
Fascinated by what ancient sculptures have represented for centuries, a source of re-evaluation of the beautiful, the absolute and the truth of form, she works with an aesthetic that comes from the academic and art-historical world. The artist studies the line of the eye, following the curves, fullness and smoothness of the works, but also the breaks and gaps.
Her works seem in suspense, waiting. Prisoners of the past but also of the future, Paola De Narvaez' immobile works abolish the real temporality between the ancestral and the new. The two worlds meet and question each other, with the public as witness.
The materials used are a direct reference to the object's durability. Ceramics and stone are the oldest vestiges of humanity. Can art survive the centuries? Can the work transcend the ages and bear witness to our current view of past worlds?
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Paola De Narvaez was born and raised in Paris to a French mother and a Colombian father, both wholeheartedly immersed in the realms of art and design.
Illustrative foundations
From her mother—a graphic designer working for magazines—Paola learned to understand and engage with aesthetics and trends. She spent her weekends and holidays with her father—a large-scale canvas painter—in the artistic enclave of Montreuil, browsing through art books (Velázquez, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Géricault, Ingres…) and exploring anatomy, composition, and drawing.
“As a child and teenager, drawing was my primary form of expression, long before writing. I felt naturally compelled to draw every day, to organize my ideas and to explain my thoughts to others.”
Always surrounded by art and design, Paola never considered working in any other field. She studied Textile design in Paris at ESAA Duperré and Mastered in Graphic Design and Communication at ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels (2018). In the past few years, she worked for fashion brands Essentiel Antwerp, Bellerose, Atelier Crump. She also worked as an illustrator for City of Brussels, The Royal Museum for Central Africa of Tervuren, magazine La Grande Oreille, TedXParis 2018 and 2019 editions, and many others.
Ceramic art
In 2016 Paola discovered the craft of ceramics in the South of France. She felt a deep intuition that it could reveal new dimensions of creativity to her. “Merging illustration and ceramics felt like a natural evolution. I find it immensely satisfying to make shapes, drawings, textures and colors interact with each other and constitute a unique world within one single piece of art.” Her Pao Ceramic collections have been featured in various shops in Europe, like Tangerine Sunshine (Antwerp), The Ode To (Stockholm) and Yonobi (Copenhagen).
Paola collaborated with the Mayer Van Den Bergh museum shop in Antwerp to create bespoke ceramic pieces, inspired by the permanent collection of the Dutch and Flemish masters. She also participated in the 2022 “1000Vases” exhibition in Paris.
Paola De Narvaez lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.
Ceramic art teaching
Not long after taking hand-building ceramics classes at Sukoon Studio in Antwerp, Paola became one of the studio’s teachers herself, specializing in hand-building ceramics and, more specifically, painting on clay. Paola’s painting on clay workshop focuses on learning how to paint with engobes, how to layer colors and create beautiful designs on clay. She teaches students how to build tableware objects and how to paint illustrations on them. The workshop became part of Sukoon Studio’s offering in 2021 and has gained popularity thanks to its unique proposition and supportive learning environment.
Want to work with Paola De Narvaez?
Paola is always open to new creative adventures.
